“Completely scripted,” I mutter as it ends and another episode begins. Even so, it gets me thinking—maybe a psychic could put my mind at rest. Or at least, perhaps someone experienced in these kinds of incidents could tell me if there’s environmental energy affecting my house and the Frankensons’ and whether it’s connected. I’ve never believed in psychics before, but I’m willing to try anything at this point.
I use my cellphone to search online and finally come across a local woman with decent ratings. She goes by the name Sylvia—no last name. I plan to call her first thing in the morning.
SYLVIA LOOKS LIKE SHE might be in her sixties, with maroon hair that has a terrible case of static electricity. As she walks into the foyer, she pulls her scarf from her shoulders and her hair threatens to follow. While shrugging out of her coat, Sylvia’s gaze climbs the walls, rising to the ceiling. I take her coat and scarf and set them on the couch in the living room. When I return to the foyer, Sylvia has placed her hand against the wall by the staircase.
“You have children?” she asks me.
“Yes, four girls.”
“Teenagers?”
“One is.”
She nods. “Mm-hm. I’m getting a strong sense of adolescent rebellion here.” She grasps the railing and begins to climb the stairs.
I follow her. “Well, I wouldn’t say rebellion. She’s a typical teenager in some ways. But she’s really a good girl. She’s just having a hard time right now. At least, I think that’s what it is.”
Sylvia tosses a wan smile over her shoulder as she crests the landing, trailing her spidery fingers over the banister. “Which one is her room?”
I point to Annalen and Gretchen’s room, and she drifts inside, holding her hands out in front of her as though feeling her way along. She walks in a circle repetitively murmuring, “hm” and “mm-hm” and “interesting.”
“My other daughters’ room is over here.” I motion toward Paris and Bridget’s door.
Sylvia shakes her head. “No. I don’t need to go in there.”
She doesn’t enter my room either but instead goes back downstairs.
I trail behind her, trying to anticipate her thought process. “You’ll probably want to see the basement—it’s where I first experienced the shadow.”
Sylvia spends less than five minutes in the basement. She again walks in a circle, touches one of the walls, and then turns to me. “I’m ready to return to the main floor.”
The woman must have a method. Maybe she doesn’t have to examine every nook and cranny of a house to feel the energy.
Once we return to the foyer, I linger by the basement door, waiting for her to ask me questions or tell me something specific that she’s sensing. Instead, Sylvia walks directly to the living room. She retrieves her coat and replaces her scarf around her neck, wrapping it several times.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m not getting anything at all here.”
My mouth falls open. “Really? Nothing?”
“I mean, I’m not sensing any entities. Good or bad. Your house seems clean to me.”
My shoulders droop with relief. “But what do you think about all the weird stuff happening around here? And next door? Could it be related to something environmental?” I laugh nervously. “Or am I just imagining these things?”
She gives me a sad sort of smile. “Well, I’m not from the EPA, and I’m not a psychologist, honey. I talk to the spirits, and they tell me things. I can see that you’re very agitated, and I sense that this all has something to do with your children, but other than that,” she shakes her head, mashes her lips together, “I don’t hear any spirits speaking to me here. I’m sorry.”
Suddenly exhausted, I exhale and nod. “Well, thank you for coming.”
Sylvia opens the front door and turns to me once more. “My gut tells me to look to your oldest daughter for answers. She may have more to do with this than you realize. But as for spirits...” she holds up her hands. “There’s nothing like that in here. Now, I can’t speak to the house next door. But maybe whatever was here has moved there. Sometimes that can happen.”
Sylvia waves, gives me a weak smile, and walks to her car.
I should feel reassured—no ghosts. Instead, I feel more anxious than ever.
29
I cook dinner that night—an increasingly rare occurrence—and we actually use our dining room, which has been collecting dust since Gunnar left.
During dinner, Annalen is quiet and subdued. Sylvia’s words hang over me about checking with my oldest daughter for answers, and I find myself staring at Annalen from across the table, scrutinizing her face for signs of trouble.
“Anything new at school?” I finally ask.
Annalen looks around like she’s surprised I’m addressing her. “No. Why?”
I shrug. “Just wondering. It’s your first year in a new school, and I haven’t really heard you talk about it. Any new friends or anything?”
“Nope.”
“How’s the science project coming?”
“Fine.”
“What’s your topic?”
“I know what it is!” Gretchen calls out.
Annalen visually shoots fiery darts across the table at her sister. “No. You don’t.”
Gretchen’s face crinkles with confusion. “But I thought you said—”
“I changed my mind.”
After we’re all finished eating, the girls pick up their plates and carry them into the kitchen.
“Whose turn is it to put dishes in the dishwasher?” Gretchen asks.
“Annalen’s turn,” Bridget says.
I reach toward Annalen to keep her in place while addressing the others. “Girls, why don’t you three work together tonight on the dishes. I need to talk to Annalen for a second.”
Annalen sinks back in her chair. “Why?”
I wait until the other three have disappeared into the kitchen before I start in. “Honey, I’ve been thinking.”
She looks up at me, her face pale, her eyes sunken. “What?”
“You girls have a lot on your plate right now, and there’s a great counselor at the clinic who works with girls your age, and—”
She shoves her chair away and jerks to her feet. “I went to the doctor like you asked, and she says I’m fine. I’m not going to see a damn shrink!”
“Annalen!”
She storms to the stairwell, and I stand, drift to the edge of stairs, and watch her stomp up. “Annalen, I’d like you to talk to me. We need to communicate with each other.”
But she’s already gone, and as she slams her bedroom door, the walls rattle.
Gretchen pokes her head out of the kitchen. “What happened?”
Sighing, I move back into the dining room and lift my wine glass. “Your sister didn’t like my suggestion.”
Gretchen’s forehead wrinkles. “She’s been acting really weird, Mom.”
I force a smile, and as I move past her, I put a hand on her shoulder. “She’s just going through a tough time right now, sweetie.”
“Aren’t we all?” Paris calls over her shoulder while drying a dish.
I shouldn’t laugh, but something about the sight of my six-year-old rolling her eyes and using an adult tone of voice strikes me as hilarious.
She laughs too.
I move to the sink beside her, pick up a dish, and begin drying it.
She looks up at me, still smiling, blissfully ignorant of the thoughts in my head. I wish I could shield her from all that is to come. Children can make you feel too much when you’d rather be numb.
Paris finishes drying her dish and places it on the counter. “Mommy, did you ever find Mr. Kitty?”
Tensing, I replay Mr. Kitty’s last few seconds before bringing the trash can lid down on top of him. “Um, no, Paris. Haven’t seen him.” This makes the second time I’ve lied to one of my kids, except this time, I don’t feel bad. That cat needed to go.
After the girls are all in bed, I return to
the kitchen. My hands shake as I uncork a bottle of chardonnay, fill a glass.
“Sorry, girls,” I whisper to no one. “I deserve this tonight.”
I carry my wine to the back deck and balance it on the railing while shifting my gaze between Steel’s house and the gap in the fence. A light shines from his kitchen, but I don’t see any movement.
I should confront him about Whitney tonight. Boundaries need to be drawn. Rules must be set.
Now I sound like my mother when she and my father first talked about what their relationship would look like after they’d both had affairs.
I think of the questions I would ask myself if I were my own client—things like, what do you need from this relationship? Honesty, for one. Do you want to have a monogamous relationship with someone? Yes, I think I might. If not now, then in the future. What makes you so sure Steel is the right man for that? I’m not. I’ve lost all perspective because the sex is amazing.
I turn to go back inside, and as I reach for the screen door handle, an image flashes into my mind and freezes there. The odd sensation of fragmented reality cascades over me, but unlike a déjà vu, it isn’t fleeting. It lingers, pixelates, and then zooms into focus.
My hand reaching for the doorknob on an old house. The creak of a board behind me. My gaze settling on the swing set in the field—the swing rocking in the wind. Only moments before I was on it. Then I turn my face into the sun, its rays segmented by the silhouette of a man.
I blink, and the vision is gone. I’m back on my own porch, my hand on my own door. Yanking it open, I plunge inside, shaking my head to dispel the images. First, the pop-up video and now scattered pictures are entering my brain, unbidden, like memories.
Standing at the sink, I down the rest of my wine. Then I wash out the glass and put it away before heading upstairs. One of the girls has left a basket of clean clothes on the landing. I carry it into the guest room, where we usually fold and sort the laundry. The shades are still raised, and I look out the window over the backyard and the adjacent property behind my house. I used to not see it from here, but the construction crews have taken down so many trees that I now have a much better view. Still, there are no finished houses yet, only a few streetlights erected and one road partially paved. There hasn’t been any construction for weeks now.
Steel’s backyard is also visible from my perch.
A small ball of light moves toward the fence line. A flashlight? Or the light from a cellphone? At any rate, it’s Steel, and he’s walking toward the construction site. Why? Is he doing work over there? If so, he hasn’t mentioned it.
For several minutes, I wait at the window, watching for him to return. But he never does.
30
Dr. Chakro calls me with my lab results. I don’t have leukemia. My iron levels are fine. She wants me to come back in a few weeks to recheck everything. Especially if the bruises don’t go away.
I don’t see Steel again until the weekend when he shoots me a text and asks me to come over and enjoy the fire pit. I’ve let it go all week—time to confront him about Whitney and possibly end things between us.
As I step into his yard, Steel approaches me, holding two glasses of wine.
“Everything all right?” He hands me one of the glasses.
I take the wine and sit in the lawn chair in front of the fire. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”
“You look a little . . . I don’t know. Maybe frantic is too strong a word.” Steel throws another log onto the pile.
“Long week.” I motion to the dancing flames. “Nice fire pit.”
“This is the first time I’ve used it.”
I gaze through the line of trees that rim his property. The streetlights for the new subdivision twinkle through the leaves. “Hey, the other night, I saw you walking over to the construction site.”
He sinks into the chair and smiles at me. “You were watching me? You stalking me now?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I just happened to see you through my window. You were carrying a flashlight, so it caught my eye.”
“Oh,” he looks toward the site. “I’m doing a little work for them, helping out with a few things over there.”
“At night?”
“I left some tools I needed to pick up.” His tone is abrupt, dismissive.
“Ah.” I follow his gaze to the trees. “I thought the construction had ended for some reason. Haven’t heard any bulldozers lately.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, but they’ll be starting up again.”
“Hopefully, they’ll bulldoze that abandoned house. What an eyesore.”
He reaches into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out a glob of tissue paper. “I was over at Miller’s Nursery, and they had a bunch of those little figurines you like. I got one for you.”
Thrown off my game, my heart involuntarily rushes a little as I pluck it from his hand. “Thank you. That was nice of you.” I hold the wrapped object, feel the ridges of the figurine.
His eyes reflect flames as he locks his gaze on the tissue paper.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
I slide my hand inside and pull the figurine from its wrapping. It’s a fairy kneeling on a lily pad. A tiny pool of water sits under her, and she holds a purple flower. But this fairy isn’t like my others, which are made from heavy resin. I run my finger over the dark red hair streaming down her body. This feels like porcelain.
“She reminded me of you,” Steel says. “The night I first saw you on your deck—like you were standing aboard a ship, looking out over dark waters. You looked—I don’t know, ethereal—like you might fly away.”
He definitely has a way with words. “Thank you. I love it.”
He reaches over, brushes his fingers against the side of my face. I pull away slightly.
“And then you have this other part of you. The part that likes to take chances. The part that likes to be a little naughty...” His eyebrow arches.
I clamp my teeth together. Steel is the only person in the world who knows about my nighttime excursions, my alter ego. Up until now, I’ve always considered those outings to be my secret, mine alone. Now, I feel like a piece of my soul is on display. He knows something about me that no one else does, and I know next to nothing about him. Except that he’s dating my client.
I take a deep breath and stare up at the sky. It’s a cloudy night, and it’s hard to see any stars. “Steel, I need to talk to you.”
His chin lifts slightly. “Okay.”
Something moves slowly across the yard, distracting me, and I wrench my head around and meet the eyes of the gray cat. It stops, stares.
“Is that your cat?”
Steel glances over at it. “Sort of, not really. It’s just been hanging out here. I let it in, feed it sometimes. He probably wants in again. He goes in and out as he pleases.”
He trails the cat to the back door, opens it. The cat runs in. The squeak of plastic follows—a water bottle yanked from its packaging on the patio.
“Do you want some water?” He twists the cap.
“No, thanks.” I sip my wine.
He lifts the bottle, swallows noisily, and sinks down in the lawn chair again.
I wait, recollecting my thoughts. Whitney. I need to talk about her without mentioning a name or revealing she’s my client.
He clears his throat. “You’re a counselor, right? You know all about depression.”
“Yes. I see a lot of patients with depression.”
“Well, I struggle with it seasonally. So when the weather gets cold, and the days get shorter, I start to feel the effects.”
“Is this something you’ve had for a while?”
“Since I was a teenager.” He rakes his hair out of his eyes and looks off. “So, if sometimes, you don’t hear from me for a few days, that could be why.”
Or because you’re off with Whitney.
“Are you on medication?”
“No. I mean, yes, sometimes, but not all the time. It’s been a w
hile since it happened. I thought maybe I was cured.”
“Depression can be deceiving.” I keep my voice level, terse, in therapist mode. “Depending on what type you have, you can feel perfectly fine for a while. Then it hits you like a freight train.”
He leans forward, drops his hands between his knees. “I’m telling you because I want to be honest with you. Sometimes when the depression hits, I can be a little weird.” He passes a hand over his beard. “And I know you’d recognize it anyway, so there’s no reason for secrets between us.”
“Secrets. Really? You want us to be completely honest with each other.”
“Completely. I meant everything I said to you, Claire,” he continues. “I want to be in your life. I think we have something.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was sincere. Mimicking his body language, I lean forward too. “Steel, I know you’re seeing other women.”
His eyes narrow and he laughs. “What?”
“Yeah. I can’t tell you how I know, and I don’t care if you want to see other women, that’s fine. But if I can’t trust you to tell me the truth... I mean, you know my secret, so there’s no reason to keep any from me. Since I have kids involved, I have to think of them too.”
A deep line forms between his brows, and his eyes dart to the right. “Claire, I’m not seeing anyone else.”
I drop my chin. “Steel, come on. I know. When I met this woman, she said she was seeing a man named Steel who was originally from Holland. How many other Steels from Holland could possibly live in the area?”
“Who? Who is it? What’s her name?”
I’m tempted to say, but I know I can’t. Even if I don’t reveal how I know her, he’s smart enough to figure it out.
“I’m not—that doesn’t matter. The issue is that I realized we were seeing the same man. You.”
He shakes his head. “No. I promise you. There’s no one else.”
I stare at him, and a cynical laugh erupts from my throat. “Steel, don’t lie. I know there is.”
“I promise you. There’s not.”
Sitting back, I run my tongue over my dry lips. “Come on. Seriously.”
The Neighbor: A terrifying tale of supernatural suspense Page 14
